Designing sensors for detecting compounds in fluids such as liquids is of technological importance. Applications range from analysis of the quality or authenticity of food stuff, to environmental studies. The environmental studies may for instance include the detection of cyanobacteria and dinoflagelates in the ocean, lakes and water courses or monitoring of changes in the water quality in those. As an example of the latter, algal blooms, caused by cyanobacteria, are increasing in frequency, duration, geographic extent, and severity in the coastal and freshwater ecosystems. Because these toxins represent a significant hazard to humans, livestock, and wildlife, it is of interest that their concentrations in raw surface waters and finished waters may be routinely quantified.
High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) based methods for detecting compounds, such as algal toxins, generally are complex, expensive, and time consuming, in part because of that the analysis cannot efficiently be performed onsite. Simpler screening methods, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), tend to lack specificity and sometimes and are not sufficiently robust.
Thus, there is a need for efficient systems and methods for detection that are field deployable, inexpensive, and which are specific to compounds of interest, for example, toxins or micro-organisms. Moreover there is a need for a high throughput capacity of sampling.